Cultural English 438 - A Streetcar Named Desire; Bryce Canyon National Park; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 438.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 438. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about another famous American movie. This one is called A Streetcar Named Desire. We’ll also talk about Bryce Canyon National Park in the state of Utah. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We’re talking about another classic American movie, called A Streetcar Named Desire. When we say a movie or a book is “classic” (classic), we mean it’s considered to be great. It’s considered to be one of the best of a particular category or kind of artwork. “Classic” can be used to describe a lot of different things, not just movies and books. Anything, I suppose, could be described as being classic. The word often refers to great pieces of art, such as a film or a book, that are from a long time ago, that were produced a long time ago.

We could talk about the classic movies of the 1950s and 60s, or we could talk about the classic cars of the 1940s and 50s. “Classic” often gives you the idea that it’s something that was produced, or made, many years ago. But there’s no rule about how old something has to be before it’s a classic. In fact, sometimes people say, “This book is an instant classic” – it’s a classic, or should be considered as a classic, right now, without waiting for years to go by before we decide that it was one of the great books or movies or whatever it happens to be. But generally, we’re talking about an older book or an older movie.

This movie was released in 1951, and it was extremely popular because it had been a popular play before it was a movie. A Streetcar Named Desire was a play written by one of the best playwrights – one of the best people who wrote plays – in the United States during the middle of the twentieth century, Tennessee Williams. Tennessee Williams won the top award for literature in the United States, the Pulitzer Prize, for this play in 1948. Williams himself decided to help adapt, or change the script of, the play so that it would work as a movie. And in 1951, the movie was released.

A Streetcar Named Desire, if you have not seen it, is set in New Orleans, Louisiana. When we say a movie or a book is “set” (set) somewhere, we mean that’s where it takes place – that’s where the story happens. This story is set in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is in the southeastern or, really, south-central part of the United States. It takes place during the late 1940s, about the time when Tennessee Williams wrote the play.

This was a time right after World War II, when the country was beginning to adjust to the new realities of not only its economy, but also the changes that were caused by having so many young men go over and fight in a war. There was definitely an impact of that experience on American culture. People like my father, who fought in World War II, were certainly affected by those experiences, and some people believe in part that’s what A Streetcar Named Desire is trying to understand.

In the play and the movie, Stanley Kowalski is the main character. He’s a man who grew up in a poor part of the city. He was not respected by other people, but he married a rich woman named Stella. Stella grew up in a wealthy, or rich, family. So, you have this poor husband and a rich wife. Stella loves Stanley and decides to give up her rich way of living in order to be with him. So, they don’t have a lot of money together.

In the story, Stella’s sister, named Blanche, arrives to stay with Stanley and Stella for a short time. She tells them that she is taking a leave of absence from her work. A “leave (leave) of absence (absence)” is when you take time off of your work – where you leave work for a week or a month; usually it’s for a longer period of time. Sometimes you get paid while you are gone, sometimes you don’t.

If a woman, for example, is going to have a baby, she might take a leave of absence, or a father might take a leave of absence to help take care of his new child. You can take a leave of absence for a lot of different reasons; it depends on the company you work for and what they will allow you to do. The idea of a leave of absence is that you can come back to your old job. You won’t lose your job just because you are not working for a certain amount of time.

Blanche doesn’t like Stanley. She thinks that Stanley is not very sophisticated, which of course, he isn’t. When we say he’s “not sophisticated,” we mean he doesn’t know a lot about the world, especially the world of wealth, of money, of power. Stanley doesn’t like Blanche, either. He thinks that she is arrogant. Someone who is “arrogant” (arrogant) thinks that he is better than other people, and certainly that’s what Stanley thinks Blanche thinks of herself – that she is better than everyone else.

Even though Stella says that she’s happy, it’s very clear in the movie that Stanley is not a very nice man. He’s very violent. He’s very mean. He yells at Stella. He throws things, and he uses his physical size and strength to scare Stella and Blanche. The word we would use here is “intimidate.” “To intimidate” (intimidate) means to make another person afraid – to do something that will scare someone else so that they will do what you tell them to do. Blanche doesn’t like Stanley and doesn’t understand why Stella continues to stay married to him.

As the play – and the movie – continues, the audience (we who are watching the movie) learn that Blanche is also not telling the truth about herself. She’s not taking a leave of absence from her job; she was fired from her job – she had to leave her job. She drinks too much, she doesn’t have any money, and she has a lot of emotional and what we might describe now as “mental problems.” She is not a very stable woman herself. Stanley learns the real reason why Blanche is visiting them – that she had been fired from her job. And when that happens, he begins to threaten her even more, to try to intimidate her even more.

One night, Stella decides to leave Stanley after Stanley hits her. She goes to stay with the woman who owns the apartment building where she’s living. We would call a female owner of a building a “landlady” (landlady) – one word. If it were a man, we would call him a “landlord” (lord). However, nowadays you don’t hear those terms as much as you used to. Most people would simply refer to the landlord and not assume anything about whether it was a man or woman. Nowadays, of course, many large apartment buildings are owned by companies so there isn’t one person that you could say owns the building.

But getting back to our story . . . Stella has left Stanley, and of course Stanley wants her back – wants her to return back to him. So, he goes out into the courtyard – the area outside of the apartment building, in front of the landlady’s window, and we then get to see what has now become one of the most famous scenes in American movie history. We see Stanley yelling for Stella, and he yells her name at a very loud volume, and it’s something that even those who have never seen the movie will probably recognize, if you grew up in the United States.

Stanley yells her name: “Stella!” Well, kind of like that. Stella eventually does return to Stanley, but the story is not over. There are more things that happen and, well, I won’t tell you what happens. You just have to go and watch the movie to see what happens to Stella, Stanley, and Blanche.

When the movie was released, it was an instant success – it became successful very quickly. It starred a young actor by the name of Marlon Brando as Stanley. Vivian Leigh, who was already a well-known actress at this time, played Blanche. And another beautiful woman, Kim Hunter, played Stella. Stanley’s friend Mitch was played by yet another actor who became famous in film and television, Karl Malden.

The film was directed by Elia Kazan. The movie was nominated for several Oscars, several Academy Awards. The Academy Awards are given to the best movies and best actors and actresses of the year in the United States. Kim Hunter, Vivien Leigh, and Karl Malden all won Oscar awards for their performances. Interestingly enough, Marlon Brando, who was one of the co-stars of the movie, was nominated, but he did not win.

However, many people believe that it was one of Marlon Brando’s greatest performances – perhaps one of the greatest performances of any actor of this period. Interestingly enough, Brando would go on and continue to be a successful actor. He was most well known, after his role in A Streetcar Named Desire, for his work in The Godfather, a movie about the Mafia in the United States – organized crime.

Many of the themes, or topics, of the play and movie are and were very controversial. When we say something is “controversial” (controversial), we mean that people disagree about them. In fact, the censors for the movie industry – the people who have the power to decide whether you can put something in the movie or not – decided to cut several of the more violent or sexual scenes from the movie. Those scenes, or sections of the movie, were put back into the film in 2012 when they released the movie again, I suppose as a DVD.

A Streetcar Named Desire remains one of the most important movies made in the mid- twentieth century for its acting and its impact, and that’s why it’s considered a classic film. Of course, that one scene with Marlon Brando yelling the name of Stella is probably one of the most famous scenes in twentieth-century American film.

Now let’s move on briefly and talk about our next topic, which is Bryce Canyon National Park. We’ve talked about several different national parks on the Café. Today we’re going to talk about a somewhat unusual national park that is located in the state of Utah. Utah is next to Nevada. It is between Nevada and Colorado. The park is like all of our national parks: land that is owned and taken care of by the federal, or national, government. It became a national park way back in 1928.

It was given the name Bryce because one of the early pioneers in this area of Utah was a Mormon – a man of the Mormon religion – by the name of Ebenezer Bryce. When I say he was one of the “pioneers” (pioneers), I mean he was one of the first people to live in this area. Well, one of the first non-American Indians to live in this area. Bryce Canyon National Park is unusual in part because of its size. It’s somewhat small for a national park, only about 56 square miles. (That would be 146 square kilometers, for the rest of the world.)

Even though it is small, it is visited by more than a million and a half people each year. The main attraction – the main thing people go to see in Bryce Canyon National Park – are the incredibly beautiful rock formations. The word “formation” here just means shapes. These are shapes of rocks that are very unusual and are very beautiful because of their different colors. The rocks in Bryce Canyon are made of limestone, which has a lot of different colors that it can take.

The most interesting rock formations in Bryce Canyon National Park are called “hoodoos.” The word “hoodoo” (hoodoo) is a not very popular one; it’s another word for magic. “Hoodoos” are very tall and narrow rocks that come right up from the ground. They’re not attached to any other rocks. It’s almost like looking at large cacti – large plants in the desert – but these aren’t cacti, they’re rocks. They’re hoodoos. They can range anywhere from 5 feet tall to 150 feet tall.

Geologists – the scientists who study rocks in the earth – call these formations “hoodoos” because they thought the rocks were almost magical. The rocks, of course, are not magical. They were formed that way through many years of water moving through the rocks. The water caused erosion. “Erosion” (erosion) is when, in this case, the water takes away a part of the rock a little bit at a time. This happened over millions of years, however, and what you see now in Bryce Canyon National Park is the result of millions and millions of years of erosion.

The park itself, if you go there – and I have not gone there, but I’ve seen photographs – is both dry and wet. At the top of the rock formations, there are trees and green areas, and at the bottom there are a lot of cactus plants – plants that need very little water. People don’t actually live in Bryce Canyon anymore, although both Mormons and Native Americans had lived there in the past.

When you visit Bryce Canyon National Park, you can do what a lot of people like to do, which is go hiking. “To hike” (hike) means to go out and walk for a long distance. I myself am not really a big hiker. I’m not a big walker. I’m not a big biker. I’m very good at driving my car. So, that’s probably what I would do if I went to Bryce Canyon National Park. Well, maybe I’d get out of my car and take a picture or two.

If you’re ever in southern Utah . . . and that wouldn’t be very usual for most people, but if you are ever in southern Utah, you can visit Bryce Canyon National Park. It is, from the photos I’ve seen, a very beautiful area and a very beautiful national park.

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Viasheslav (Viasheslav) from Finland. We don’t get a lot of questions from Finland. I’m sure it’s a very beautiful country, however. Maybe it’s so beautiful, people don’t have time to ask questions. But we do have a question, and it has to do with three somewhat similar words: “lockout,” “walkout,” and “strike.” All three of these words are used in a business setting, usually to describe some problem with the people who work for the company.

Let’s start with “lockout” (lockout). A “lockout” is when a business decides to close the area for working – decides that it’s not going to have anybody come in and do work because there is some problem with the workers themselves. Usually what happens is the workers want more money, and the company doesn’t want to give them more money, and so one of the things the company can do is say, “Okay, we’re just going to close, and you guys are not going to work at all, and you’re not going to get paid.”

A “lockout” is not the same as firing all of your employees, which a company may not legally be able to do, especially if the workers have formed a certain organization called a “union.” A “union” (union) is when the workers get together and they decide to negotiate with the owners of the company as a group, rather than as individual people. Individual employee’s unions are not as strong in the United States, nor are they as popular in the United States, as they are in many other countries, but we do still have unions in the U.S.

A “lockout,” though, is when the business decides it’s going to close because it doesn’t want to deal with, or doesn’t want to perhaps negotiate with, the union or the group of workers. A “walkout” (walkout) is when the workers decide to leave their workplace and not continue to work. This usually happens with a group of workers – not necessarily all of the employees of the company, but there may be a group of workers within the company that decides that it’s so angry at the owners of the business that it’s simply going to stop working.

A “strike” (strike) is when an organized group of workers, typically a union, decides together that no one – none of the employees – is going to go to work. They’re all going to stay away from their jobs, and instead, what they typically do is protest in front of the building. They carry signs and walk back and forth, trying to get people to stop buying from that business or stop using the services of that business. That’s a “strike.”

Our next question comes from Takanori (Takanori) in Japan. Takanori wants to know about a phenomenon that takes place every spring in the United States called “March Madness.” “March Madness” is the name given to the playoff season in college basketball. College basketball teams – university basketball teams – play each other during the year, and at the end of the year they have a big tournament, a big competition to decide who is the best team. This takes place usually in March.

The tournament begins with lots of different teams, and then it gets smaller and smaller – the number of teams that continue to play gets smaller and smaller – until you’re down to just two teams. There are special names that are given to the levels of competition in the tournament. For example, eventually you get down to just 16 teams. When there are only 16 teams left, that’s called the “Sweet Sixteen.” The word “sweet” is one that has a couple of different meanings. It can mean something that has a pleasant taste, such as you would get from sugar or honey, but more recently, “sweet” has been used to mean great or incredible or fantastic. So, the “Sweet Sixteen” are the 16 final teams in the tournament.

Then you have only eight teams, and those are called the “Elite Eight.” You see a pattern here where they use the same letter in the adjective as they do in the number. We had “Sweet Sixteen.” Now we have “Elite Eight.” “Elite” is an adjective that would describe people who are the very best at what they do, people who have the most power or perhaps the most talent or the most money. Those would be people who we could describe as being “elite.” After the Elite Eight, once again the number of teams is reduced by half, and we end up with just four teams. And those four teams are called the “Final Four” because this is the last part of the competition – the final part of the competition.

The word we would use to describe using the same letter or same sound at the beginning of both words such as “Sweet Sixteen,” “Elite Eight,” and “Final Four” is “alliteration.” “Alliteration” is when you use the same sound at the beginning of two or more words together. So, if you like American college basketball, if you like watching American college basketball – and I do not, but if you do – well, then you now know a little bit more about what happens during March Madness.

Finally, Moussa (Moussa) in Mali wants to know the meaning of the phrase “to dote on.” “To dote (dote) on” someone means to show someone a lot of affection, a lot of love – to take care of someone by doing everything that person needs to have done. “To dote on a child” would be to be very affectionate and loving with the child, but also to do whatever the child wanted done, and therefore, there is somewhat of a negative meaning to this phrasal verb “to dote on.” It’s usually used when a parent or someone else is paying too much attention to a young child.

If you pay too much attention to the young child and you do whatever the young child wants, you’ll end up with my neighbor’s children. No, I’m just kidding! You’ll end up with a very spoiled child. A “spoiled” (spoiled) child is a child who always gets what he wants, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, he starts yelling and screaming and crying – like my neighbor’s child.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

performance – the acting that someone does on a stage, in a television show, or in a movie

* Tom Hanks won an Academy Award for his performance as Forrest Gump.

to adapt – to change something to make it fit or work better with someone else

* People who move from hot to cold weather climates adapt by learning to wear warmer clothing on cold days.

leave of absence – an extended period of not being at work and not getting paid, usually for family or health reasons

* Yuko had to take a leave of absence from work when her mother got sick.

to intimidate – to use size, strength, or power to scare another person

* Paulo felt intimidated by the other runners in the race who were bigger and faster than he was.

controversial – something that creates disagreement and discomfort in a group of people

* The decision to allow women to vote was controversial since many people did not think women were educated enough to vote.

censor – a person who has the power to say what can and cannot be shown in a movie or television show, or printed in a book

* The censors made the author remove some words from his book because they thought the words would hurt people’s feelings.

national park – land that is owned and taken care of by the government, and that people can visit to see and experience nature

* The people who work in national parks as park rangers are employees of the United States government.

pioneer – the first person to move somewhere and to make it their home; the first person to do something important

* The Wright brothers were pioneers in flying when they built the first airplane.

rock formation – the shape or arrangement of rocks

* Some people think that the rock formations near the base of the mountain look like small houses.

hoodoo – a tall, thin rock that sticks up from the ground that used to be connected to a mountain but no longer is

* Hoodoos come in many different shapes and some look like animals.

geologist – a scientist who studies the Earth and the Earth’s surface and history

* Geologists studying rocks in the desert found evidence that millions of years ago, that area had been covered with ice.

hiking – walking long distances, usually through woods or mountains, for exercise or enjoyment

* Kile went hiking in the mountains and brought a lot of water and food for his trip.

lockout – a temporary closing down of a workplace or a business where employees are not expected to do any work during a dispute with management

* The factory had to stop production during the 30-day lockout.

walkout – the leaving of a meeting, conversation, or event because of strong emotions such as anger or disapproval, often as the first step in a strike

* When the company president said that she would not listen to any more complaints, the employees staged a walkout.

strike – the refusal of an organized group of employees to continue working because of disputes or disagreements, in an attempt to let their opinions and thoughts be heard

* How will we pay our rent if this strike continues for another month?

sweet – a nice or pleasant taste, such as in sugar or honey; an informal term meaning “great” or “incredible”

* That’s the latest model and it’s a sweet car!

elite – people or groups of people who are the very best at what they do or are very well-known because of their power, wealth, or abilities

* Do the elite members of the team get special treatment?

final – the last one or part of something, right before something ends

* Our final speech tonight will be about how we can work better as a team.

to dote on – to show too much affection or caring/love for someone, usually a parent to a child

* Amarisa’s grandparents dote on her, treating her like she were five-years-old, even though she’s already a teenager.

What Insiders Know

The Stella Awards

From 2002 to 2007, an unusual type of award was given out as a joke. The award, called the Stella Awards, “honored” (celebrated) people who had filed “lawsuits” (disputes in court) that were “deemed” (considered to be) “frivolous” (shouldn’t be taken seriously), but many of which were successful.

The awards were named after a woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, named Stella Liebeck, who, in 1992, went to a McDonald’s “drive-through” (area at a fast food restaurant where you can order and purchase food without leaving your car) with her grandson to order a cup of hot coffee. Since the car didn’t have cup holders, Ms. Liebeck placed the hot coffee in between her “thighs” (upper part of her legs) in order to add cream and sugar to her coffee. She accidentally “spilled” (caused the liquid to come out of the cup accidentally) the hot coffee on her “lap” (top, upper part of her legs while seated), causing serious burns.

She decided to “sue” (go to court) against McDonald’s to pay for her medical expenses. Her lawyer accused McDonald’s of “gross negligence” (failure to use reasonable care). The lawyer argued that the temperature of the coffee – 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit (82-88 degrees Celsius) – was too hot. The court awarded Stella Liebeck $160,000 in “compensatory damages” (paying for the damage that was done) and $2.7 million in “punitive damages” (as a way of punishing McDonalds for doing something wrong).

Years later, one “recipient” (receiver) of the Stella Award was Kathleen Robinson, who was awarded $780,000 in 2000 when she broke her ankle in a furniture store, after tripping over her young child. That same year, Amber Carson of Pennsylvania, was awarded $113,500 after “slipping on” (falling because one’s feet accidentally lifts off the ground) spilled soda. She had thrown that soda at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier.